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Smart and repeatable easy-repairing and self-sensing composites with enhanced mechanical performance for extended components life

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journal contribution
posted on 2024-02-29, 16:51 authored by Thomas D.S. Thorn, Yi LiuYi Liu, Xudan Yao, Dimitrios G. Papageorgiou, Paul Robinson, Emiliano Bilotti, Ton Peijs, Han Zhang
Structural composites with smart functionalities of self-healing and self-sensing are of particular interest in the fields of aerospace, automotive, and renewable energy. However, most of the current self-healing methodologies either require a relatively complex design of the healing network, or sacrifice the initial mechanical or thermal performance of the carbon fibre composite system after introducing the healing agents. Herein, an extremely simple methodology based on commonly used thermoplastic interleaves has been demonstrated to achieve repeatable easy-repairing and self-sensing functionalities, alongside enhanced mechanical performance in comparison with unmodified carbon fibre/epoxy system. Moreover, due to the high glass transition temperature of the thermoplastic, the repairable composites are shown to have an unchanged storage modulus up to 80 °C, solving the previous limitation of repairable epoxy matrix systems with thermoplastics. High retention of peak load (99%) and a decent recovery of interlaminar fracture toughness (34%) was achieved. Most importantly, the mechanical properties remained greater than the unmodified system after four consecutive cycles of damage and healing. Repeatable in-situ damage sensing was achieved based on the piezoresistive method. This “new” discovery based on an “old” approach, which is fully compatible with current composite manufacturing, may overcome existing conflicts between mechanical performance and healing functions, providing a new solution to extend components’ service life towards a more sustainable development of the composite sector.

Funding

ESTEEM: Energy efficient and Safe out-of-oven manufacTuring for compositE materials with intEgrated Multifunctionalities

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

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History

School

  • Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering

Department

  • Materials

Published in

Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing

Volume

165

Publisher

Elsevier

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© The Authors

Publisher statement

This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Acceptance date

2022-11-22

Publication date

2022-11-28

Copyright date

2022

ISSN

1359-835X

eISSN

1878-5840

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Yi Liu. Deposit date: 28 February 2024

Article number

107337

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